The easiest way to plant your vegetables is to buy a packet of seeds, but most often those seeds are hybrids which means they don’t stay “true to type”, so you can never be sure exactly what quality of veggies will end up on your plants.

Seed saving has become popular among those trying to preserve the biodiversity of our crops (in the face of mass commercialization of hybrized varieties), as well as among permaculturists and organic and heirloom farmers, but one of the simplest reason to save seeds: you can nearly guarantee a legacy of great tasting veggies.

To be sure your next seasons tomatoes taste exactly like this seasons- or to reproduce an amazing tomato you bought at the store/ate at a restaurant/were given by a friend- you can simply save the seeds and plant them in the spring (Ideally, the tomato should be an heirloom variety since hybrized and cloned plants don’t produce similar offspring).

In this video, backyard gardener Candela Guerrero shows us her personal seed bank (with tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, etc) and the dried seeds she’s saved from the previous summer that she’s preparing to plant (her personal favorites: “muchamiel” for salads and “pata negra” for canning).